December 2019 Investor Update

December 9th, 2019

Hello dot.LA investors and supporters,

Spencer and I hope that you had wonderful Thanksgivings with your loved ones. We are thankful for your support of dot.LA and are so excited to share what we have created as we approach our January launch.

It’s been quite a month for LA tech. Honey’s $4B acquisition by PayPal shows that the future of innovation lies here. Congratulations to our friends who participated in this monumental exit for our ecosystem!

Much progress has been made at dot.LA since our last investor update, and we’re thrilled to share what we’ve been up to.

Fundraising Update: 

We are pleased to announce that we have overshot our fundraising target. While we originally targeted $3M in our SAFE note, overwhelming demand from strategically-key investors has driven the total size up to approximately $3.6M. We have not formally closed the round yet since a few strategic investors are still coming in, but the end is very near. We are so thankful to all of you who have believed in this project and shown your support by entering our seed note round. We will put the entire investor list into our next investor update.

Recruiting Update:

We are very thrilled to have brought on Rachel Uranga as our fourth editorial hire. Rachel will be our “startups and culture” reporter, and is coming to us from the Los Angeles Business Journal by way of Columbia’s Journalism School and Reuters. We’re very excited to have her on the team and look forward to her contributions to the mission.

In addition, we are extending offers to three additional candidates - a managing editor, a “growth hacking” engagement editor, and a junior reporter - to round out our launch editorial team. 

Finally, we are continuing our search to fill two events team positions: a senior and strategic Events Director, and a more operational Events Manager. While we have sourced a number of qualified and enthusiastic candidates, we welcome any suggestions you may have.

Editorial Update:

Our website is about ready to be deployed after a full development process with our excellent partner, Rebel Mouse. Please feel free to browse the beta version of the site (ignoring the content itself, which is placeholder from the developers) and feel free to suggest any changes before we lock the design in the next week or so.

As email newsletters are a key component of our distribution strategy, we are focused on making it as visually engaging as possible. Here is a screenshot of the current design: 

Right now our editorial team is conducting the most thorough census of the LA startup ecosystem that has ever been conducted. We’re hammering out a data-sharing partnership with Pitchbook that will give us access to their best-in-class source of information on fundraising and valuation. We’re combining that with putting in the legwork of reaching out to hundreds of companies to build an extensive database that will be a “secret weapon” moving forward as well as the foundation for a possible future paid data product at some point.

Launch Timeline:

We are still ahead of timeline for our January 29th, 2020 official launch at the Upfront Summit, with another event at the January 28th dinner that Crosscut Ventures is hosting. We are still finalizing the details of what our presence at each of those events will look like.

In addition, we are in discussions with Mayor Garcetti’s office about an event at City Hall in the first week of launch to demonstrate the city’s support of the project.

We are still negotiating with various media partners about giving the exclusive announcement of dot.LA in exchange for in-depth coverage. Potential partners for this include the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal - our excellent marketing partners at Kingston Marketing Group are on the case and will secure us visible and friendly coverage. We expect this formal announcement to occur on January 6, 2020 - but have contingencies in place in the event that word of this project breaks widely before these occur. But in the meantime, please use discretion in who you discuss dot.LA with!

In addition, please mark your calendars for the night of January 23, 2020, when we will be hosting a friends & investors launch party.

Partnerships:

Spencer and I have been making the rounds of as many local institutions as possible in order to find ways to partner. For example, we are in conversations with a well-known foundation about sponsoring a diversity, equity, and inclusion vertical - which will allow us to supercharge our coverage of this vital area while opening up a new lane of revenue. Other organizations we have been working with include: Grid110, LA-Tech.org, LAFC, and the Mayor’s office.

How You Can Help:

• We’re sourcing vendors for our branded merchandise such as t-shirts/sweatshirts and notebooks. If possible, we’d like to work with an innovative local vendor(s) to further our mission by giving them exposure. If you have any ideas/contacts, please reach out.

• We’re beginning to think about finding a “launch sponsor” to work with in the opening month after the site goes live. While we have some discussions ongoing with potential organizations, any thoughts on a good match would be much appreciated. 

• Housekeeping: Please let us know if you would prefer to receive these emails to another address, if someone else from your firm would like to receive them as well, etc.

Finally, we have made great progress on our brand positioning, design, and editorial tone. With our partners at KMG, we have finalized our Brand Book which lays out our visual identity, mission, core values, and brand personality. If you are interested, you can view it here.

Thanks again for your support.

Sam Adams

Co-founder and CEO, dot.LA

Spencer Rascoff

Co-founder and Executive Chair, dot.LA